periodic table The 4 newest elements on the periodic table have just been named

[Reefa]

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Back in January, officials announced that four new elements had earned a permanent spot on the periodic table, with elements 113, 115, 117, and 118 rounding out the seventh row.

At the time, they all had temporary names and symbols - ununtrium (Uut), ununpentium (Uup), ununseptium (Uus), and ununoctium (Uuo) - but the tyranny of the Uus is finally over, because we now have some shiny new names to get excited about. 

Teams of researchers from the US, Russia, and Japan have all been credited with the discovery of these new elements, so have been given the naming rights - which come with some very specific criteria.

As stipulated by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC), the organisation responsible for confirming the discovery of new elements, any new element must be named after either:

• A mythological concept or character (including an astronomical object)
• A mineral, or similar substance
• A place or geographical region
• A property of the element
• A scientist

Nice to see that fantasy nerds can still get their fill. Can we please call something drogonian? 

With that in mind, here are the new proposed names:

• nihonium and symbol Nh, for the element with Z =113,
• moscovium with the symbol Mc, for the element with Z = 115,
• tennessine with the symbol Ts, for the element with Z = 117, and
• oganesson with the symbol Og, for the element with Z = 118.

As Brian Resnick reports for Vox, nihonium is derived from "Nippon", a Japanese word for Japan, and moscovium honours the Russian capital city, Moscow. 

Tennessine is named after the state of Tennessee, known for its pioneering research in chemistry. "Tennessine is in recognition of the contribution of the Tennessee region, including Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Vanderbilt University, and the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, to superheavy element research," says the IUPAC.

This marks the second US state to be honoured on the periodic table, the first was California, referenced by californium (element 98), which was discovered in the 1950s. Hassium (element 108), was named after the German state of Hesse.

Oganesson is named after 83-year-old Russian physicist Yuri Oganessian, and according to Richard Van Noorden from Nature, this is only the second time a new element has been named for a living scientist. 

"The first such occasion led to huge controversy, when in 1993 a team at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory proposed naming element 106 seaborgium for US nuclear-chemistry pioneer Glenn Seaborg," says Van Noorden. "At the time an IUPAC committee rejected the proposal, after passing a resolution that elements not be named for living scientists, but it ultimately relented."

The names were proposed by the research teams, accepted by the IUPAC, and now have to undergo a five-month period of public review, which expires on 8 November 2016.

If no one complains - which is likely, considering how inoffensive they all are - the names will then get formal approval. Then it’s time to throw out our old text books and scrub down our bathroom walls and make room for the new arrivals.

So why did these four elements take so long to make it on to the periodic table?

Unlike the classics, such as gold, iron, and aluminium, these new elements are not found in nature. They’re synthetic elements that can only be created in the lab, and they decay so fast after synthesis, for years the teams behind them didn’t have a chance to get a proper look before they morphed into something else entirely.

"For over seven years we continued to search for data conclusively identifying element 113, but we just never saw another event," Kosuke Morita from RIKEN in Japan said of nihonium back in January. "I was not prepared to give up, however, as I believed that one day, if we persevered, luck would fall upon us again."

The Japanese team now has its sights set on "uncharted territory of element 119 and beyond", so hopefully we'll have a drogonian element soon. (We all need to dream sometimes!)

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[luisam]

Is there a scientist who might explain what is the practical use and utility of some element, like for example this ununoctium (118) if you need about a dozen highly qualified nuclear scientists in a 100 M dollars worth nuclear laboratory to generate 10 atoms of it with a 0,10 second of half-life. Ok, I just invented this information but the reality is probably something similar.

Clap clap clap... I apllaud feature... I remember how impressed  I was back when I was just a kid reading about the "discovery" of Einsteinium, element 99. Scientist can produce about one miligram per year using a couple of dedicated high-power nuclear reactors. There are no practical applications for einstinium outside of basic scientific research. In particular, einsteinium was used to synthesize 17 atoms of the new mendelevium (element 101). 

Fermium is element 100 . Threre must be documentation, books, papers etc. about Fermium to fill a library but I understand that it's best and only use is honoring the memory of Enrico Fermi. Apart of this fact, there are currently no uses for it outside of basic scientific research. AND SO ON, UP TO ELEMENT 118!

Probably the best explanation and application of these elements is this Science Fiction novel by Michael Swanwick  - read it on line at (take note that it's just SF, not the real description of ununoctium

http://periodictableofsciencefiction.blogspot.com/
 

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118 Uuo Ununoctium (?)

 

  Now You See It Now You  

Ununoctium was discovered in 1999 by a team of scientists at Berkeley Laboratory who created three atoms of Element 118 by fusing krypton-86 with lead-208. It was undiscovered two years later by that same team. Which means that after a long run as the heaviest undiscovered transfermian element, it briefly served as the heaviest known transfermian element, before reverting to its prior, undiscovered state. For which reason several wags suggested it be named "schrodingerium," after Schrodinger's cat.

Ununoctium, however, is a cat not only of a different color but of a different temperament altogether. It is a Cheshire Cat of an element, the first of the trans-transfermian elements known as the Cheshirides. The distinguishing characteristic of a Cheshire element is that it has a negative half-life. X days after coming into being, it ceases having ever existed. Then its nonexistence similarly decays, and once again it's real. It cycles in and out of existence.

Now it's here. Now it's not. Now it's here again.

Just like that.

How you feel about the Cheshirides says a lot about your personality. Is the glass half empty or half full? Are you unwilling to live with ambiguity? Does having something firmly in your grasp and then opening your hand to discover that somehow it's gone make you angry? If you answered yes to any of these questions, then you're simply not cut out to be a physicist.

To a pessimist, ununoctium is like life: nasty, brutish, and painful—and then, all too soon, it's over. To an optimist, it's also like life: a miracle that's been thrust upon us, as unlikely as a unicorn or a griffin, but better than either because it's real.

But wait! Neither viewpoint describes ununoctium as it really is. Because after it's all over and done with, it pops into existence again, as inevitable as the dawn. So it's not like life at all, but more like fiction—always ending, always beginning, there whenever you want it. So it's over! So what? It's not like death, that undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveler returns. There's no need for regret. Grief is pointless. If you're sorry it's finished, there's always a solution.

Go back to the beginning and start all over again.

 

 

[humble3d]

We do live in interesting times...